


The Lord's Push, the Lady's Pull

by rekishi



Category: Malazan Book of the Fallen - Erikson
Genre: Book: The Bonehunters, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:51:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rekishi/pseuds/rekishi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way to Aren, High Fist Ganoes Paran ponders past and future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lord's Push, the Lady's Pull

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atheilen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/gifts).



Survivors, all of them. Fiddler, Quick Ben, and now Hedge. Hedge returned from the dead. Picker, Mallet, Bluepearl, Antsy and Blend in Darujhistan.

Even Kalam, now in the Deadhouse in Malaz City, under the probably not too tender ministrations of whatever guardian the Azath had chosen.

Ganoes Paran, newly appointed High Fist of the Host, sighed and rubbed his eyes while his horse made step after step under him. He didn't know how he knew. The knowledge was in his head, coming from out of nowhere. He didn't think the Master of the Deck was supposed to be omniscient and there were no details about his sister in his mind, nothing about the state of the Empire. He couldn't even say if they might not meet some battle the next day.

Maybe it was Shadowthrone, putting whispers into his head in revenge for being summoned.

But he knew who yet lived of those people he had once commanded by request, and who had eventually accepted him as their Captain. Although maybe all of that had been too late.

Whiskeyjack, Trotts, Detoran, Shank, Aimless, Toes ... Names swirled in his mind; men and women who had stepped through Hood's gate but who had been dragged back through it by the Tanno Spiritwalker's song, unwittingly acknowledged by Fiddler. Ganoes had not known all of them. The Bridgeburners who had died at Blackdog Forest or in Mott Wood, northeast of Nathilog... he knew their names, not their faces. He knew them all. He had seen them all flash past, appearing in that ghostly army before him in Raraku.

A quick twist in the saddle, a glance back at his host, the old Fists sworn to the Empire, Mathok and his four thousand warriors sworn more or less to him personally. They were marching for Aren, but what awaited them there he didn't know. Maybe war. Maybe disbandment. Ganoes Paran had not chosen to inherit Dujek Onearm's Host. Yet he had assumed that responsibility by that single act of defeating Poliel.

He wondered what Tavore would think when she heard of it.

Somewhere in his head, he could hear a god laughing.


End file.
